Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Update: The company offered me a $30 refund to delete this interview. I declined. This makes me suspicious off the other positive reviews. Too bad really, the product has great potential and they should focus on improving it rather than covering up its flaws. This product has potential but does not deliver. The cameras have good quality optics. The nvr looks nice and the nvr software is decent and flexible. However, as a wireless surveillance system it failed miserably. First, there is a typical problem with most of these wireless cameras from China. They are advertised as wireless and only require power. Yet their cable comes with this huge plug for Ethernet that is not removable. I guess they want to allow for wired connection, but... what am I supposed to do with that to run it through an outside wall? Drill a 1.5 inch hole in my stone wall to pass a plastic dongle that will be unused? Extremely stupid design. The whole point of getting a wireless camera is to avoid drilling holes in your wall. I can manage a 1/2 inch hole to run the power adapter cable but that ethernet connector needs to be completely removed. To solve this problem, I cut the ethernet cable altogether. Of course that makes the camera unusable as a wired camera (no big deal) and the system non-returnable (yes- I'm stuck with it). Second and more importantly, the Wifi on this system sucks. The NVR sets up its own Wifi network to communicate with its cameras. Within 5 ft it works great. But when I took the camera and installed it outside (about 20 ft from the nvr, separated by only a glass window- hardly a barrier for most Wifi routers) I got almost no signal. The NVR struggled to connect to the camera. No amount of fiddling with antennas and positioning worked. Luckily, Fiona from Safevant's customer service was very responsive and friendly. She immediately sent me bigger antennas to use. Unfortunately, the antennas did very little to improve the situation. Using Wifi signal measurement software, it revealed that the NVR wifi signal is EXTREMELY weak. Not sure if this is a hardware or software problem but my neighbors Wifi signals were registering stronger signals and higher transmission rates. I would have been fine if I could eliminate the built in Wifi and have the cameras go through my own Wifi router (which I get signal 3 times further than the camera location), but there is ZERO documentation on how the NVR finds and configures the cameras or how to modify the cameras to use your own Wifi. Also, although the SSID and password are configurable from the software, I could not use a Wifi signal booster to improve the signal, it simply didn't work and Fiona would not provide any details on how to make it work. Third, the iPhone app is HORRIBLE. It is slow, freezes often and you have to quit and come back to force it to refresh the camera view. The playback feature is poorly implemented as there doesn't seem to be a way to change the speed of replay. Finally, one positive aspect is that the NVR is able to accept 3rd party cameras. Not sure what qualifies but it did pick up an indoor wireless IP camera I already had installed. That camera was going through my own router and it works flawlessly. So maybe the solution is to dump the included cameras and add your own IP cameras instead. I had 2 other cameras that it detected but could not add. So there is some magic to get that working. Of course, when it comes to adding 3rd party cameras you're on your own and expect no help from Safevant. Well, at least you know it is possible, It is also a great value. I did quite a bit of research and in comparison to similar bundles it is a really good value. Of course, however, if it doesn't perform as advertised, it has zero value. But I expect all of these generic Chinese system share in these technical challenges. Overall, unless you are going to install the camera VERY close to the NVR and don't rely on the iPhone app very much, I would strongly advise against purchasing this system until Safevant fixes the problem with its Wifi signal.